Thermal noise in amorphous coatings is a limitation for a wide range of precision experiments such as gravitational-wave detectors (GWDs). Mirrors for GWDs are composed of multiple thin layers of dielectric materials deposited on a substrate: the stack is made of layers with a high refractive index interleaved with layers of a low refractive index. The goal is to obtain high reflectivity and low thermal noise. In this paper we report on the optical and mechanical properties of ion-beam-sputtered aluminium fluoride (AlF3) thin films which have one of the lowest refractive index among the known coating materials and we discuss their application in current and future GWDs.
@article{arxiv.2206.04550,
title = {Characterization of ion-beam-sputtered AlF$_3$ thin films for gravitational-wave interferometers},
author = {M. Bischi and A. Amato and M. Bazzan and G. Cagnoli and M. Canepa and G. Favaro and D. Forest and P. Gobbi and M. Granata and G. M. Guidi and G. Maggioni and F. Martelli and M. Menotta and M. Montani and F. Piergiovanni and L. Valentini},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2206.04550},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2111.01646